Scaramucci could get slammed with taxes if he doesn’t land White House gig

New York Post

12th March 2017

hedge fund executive Anthony Scaramucci, his possible White House gig already very much up in the air, could be facing a whopping tax bill if no Trump administration job is offered by the summer, The Post has learned. Scaramucci, in anticipation of being offered the job as Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, to his partners for roughly $100 million. Some of the profit on the sale will be subject to capital gains taxes, sources said, unless he gets a Trump administration post and invests the proceeds in assets, like Treasury bonds, within 60 days of the sale.

With the sale expected to close in roughly 30 days, that gives the hedge fund executive, affectionately known as The Mooch, roughly 90 days to get a Trump administration job — or face a tax bill possibly millions of dollars higher than expected, sources said. “If he doesn’t get a job, he’ll have lost his business and be subject to tens of millions in taxes,” a source close to the situation said. The Mooch’s SkyBridge partners plan to sell the fund to a group led by Chinese conglomerate HNA Group.

Under IRS code, a person investing the proceeds of an asset sale — undertaken to avoid a conflict of interest — in an approved way will not pay the higher capital gains taxes until those approved assets are sold. The IRS rule is aimed at keeping wealthy persons from paying a tax penalty just for taking a public sector job. The Mooch’s situation got a little more tenuous last week after the White House named George Sifakis to the job he was expected to fill.